1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a retrieval and release apparatus and method used with discs for retrieving the discs from a disc tray and releasing the discs into the disc tray automatically.
2. Related Art
As more and more people become used to dealing with digital information in their daily lives, different information storage devices are being produced. Considering the low cost of discs and improvements in optical disk drives, the information storage device that most people use is a disc.
Discs copying technology falls into two categories, tabletting and recording. Tabletting is used for copying a great quantity of discs. For copying a small quantity of discs, tabletting costs more than recording because of the larger scale of tabletting. The recording speed of the recorders is improving and their price is lowering. So, people choose recording instead of tabletting for copying a small quantity of discs.
However, time-consumption and uneconomical labor expenses are its disadvantages. That is, even when there are few discs, people still have to record the discs one by one, which wastes much time and labor. To overcome the above disadvantages, thus a recording system satisfying the demand of efficiently copying discs has been manufactured. The recording system uses a mechanical arm under a computer controlling system to retrieve an unrecorded disc from an unrecorded disc stack and release the unrecorded disc into the disc tray of the optical disk drive. After the unrecorded disc is recorded, the mechanical arm retrieves the recorded disc and releases the discs into a recorded discs stack. By the computer controlling system and mechanical arm, the procedures of disc copying can be done automatically, thus faster and more efficiently than in the past.
Because the disc tray of the optical disk drive extends out completely, the mechanical arm can retrieve the disc. But as more and more computers are designed to be smaller, their disc trays do not extend out completely now. Refer to FIG. 1A, which shows a disc tray extending out completely. In this type of the optical disk drive, the disc tray for placing discs not only extends out completely but also keeps a distance D with the surface panel of the optical disk drive; therefore, discs can be retrieved by the mechanical arm using conventional way of non-slant retrieving without any difficulties. On the other hand, as shown in FIG. 1B, which shows a disc tray extended incompletely. In this type of the optical disk drive, the disc tray for placing discs is not extending completely but shrinking inside a distance D′ from the surface panel of the optical disk drive; therefore, discs can't be retrieved by the mechanical arm using conventional way of non-slant retrieving because the mechanical arm would be blocked by the surface panel of the optical disk drive.